Tragically, the body of a newborn baby girl was discovered in a communal waste bin in North Yorkshire. When the child was discovered paramedics rushed to the scene to try and resuscitate her; however the girl was already dead.
A local woman who lived near the scene told the Daily Mail more about the discovery.
She said, “There are blocks of flats and outside each block is an area where they keep the bins for each block. That is where it happened – just behind me. The first thing I knew there was anything wrong was when all the police turned up. All we can think is how awful it is – especially if it’s just a young lass. The actual play area is a bit away from where it happened.Where the body was found is like a through area where all the people from the local estate pass through to come into town. So finding the mum could be a real needle in a haystack job. Everyone is just so shocked because this is such a nice area.”
Richmond Safer Neighborhood Team Inspector, Mark Gee, said authorities were opening an investigation. He said, “Enquiries are at a very early stage and our primary concern is to locate the mother of the new born baby girl to ensure that she receives urgent medical care. It is highly likely that the mother is in a very distressed state and needs professional support. We urge her to contact the police or medical staff as a matter of urgency as her health and wellbeing is the priority.”
Another member of the community said, “Everyone is in a little bit of a state of shock. We’re reeling. And I think everyone here is concerned for the mother. I’m sure she will be in a state. It’s very worrying.”
Even though the baby is deceased, the head of midwifery at the Darlington Memorial Hospital, Ann Holt, urged the baby’s mother to contact police. Holt said, “Our message is for mum to come forward for the serious medical complications that might occur following this kind of delivery, like bleeding and infection, but also from the point of view that we have a baby here without her mum. We would like to reunite the mum with her baby in our hospital.”
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Since police have just opened the investigation, they don’t know how the baby died, why she was abandoned or the state of the mother. Unfortunately, every year in the United Kingdom approximately fifty babies are abandoned by their parents. This is why in 2013 campaigners called for “baby hatches” to be placed in hospitals and medical units across the UK.
aby hatches are heated units where a mother can safely and secretly place her baby; and are often described as padded incubators. Alley Lofthouse, the founder of a campaign called A Foundling explained that these hatches should be made legal because people who abandon their children sometimes have a real and desperate need to surrender their baby into safe hands.
Currently, there are about 100 hatches located in Germany, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Hungary and Italy.
Abandoning a child is against the law across Europe, but some countries have introduced amendments to protect mothers who use a baby hatch.